


these small hands

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Series: childhood living is (not) easy to do [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang is a sweetheart, Ableism, Ableist Language, And more to do with the fact that Toph and her parents have a very unhealthy relationship, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Toph Beifong, Badgermoles, Canon Disabled Character, Character Study, Child Neglect, Disability, Earth Rumble VI, Earthbending & Earthbenders, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Family Issues, Fights, Figuring Yourself Out, Forehead Kisses, Found Family, Gen, Growing Up, Healing, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Iroh (Avatar) is a Good Uncle, Katara is a Fighter, Less to do with the fact that Toph is blind, Love, Love is hard, Nightmares, Physical Disability, Plans For The Future, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Post-100 Year War (Avatar TV), Post-Canon, Sparring, Suki is Underappreciated, Team as Family, This be Loving Toph Hours folk, Toph Beifong-centric, Toph Being Awesome, Toph is figuring it out though, Toph's Parents are Not Great, Trauma, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, but i love her, dealing with the aftermath, emotions are hard, sokka is a good bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24971239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: At nine, she gets four rounds in before being disqualified. She grumbles and groans about it, heads out to the mountains and practices, practices, practices. She’s going to win this. She’s going to show her parents, show everyone, that she’s not incapable, not helpless, not fragile.The earth sings. Toph moves with it. Practices with badger moles and with random challengers. Falls and skins her knees and gets back up, feels the dirt and the sweat, feels the validation of being treated like an equal, of having people fighting her with their all. It hums inside of her and grows and grows and grows, and it makes her feel powerful.If her parents ever realize she’s missing, they don’t ask.Toph: A character study.
Relationships: Aang & Toph Beifong, Aang & Toph Beifong & Katara & Sokka & Suki & Zuko, Toph Beifong & Iroh, Toph Beifong & Katara, Toph Beifong & Sokka, Toph Beifong & Suki, Toph Beifong & Zuko
Series: childhood living is (not) easy to do [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1802353
Comments: 80
Kudos: 387
Collections: Anodyne fics, AtLA <10k fics to read, toph stan library





	these small hands

**Author's Note:**

> Not enough Toph-centric fics. Must amend this.
> 
> I am not blind. I have very limited experiences with people who are blind. I did my best to capture Toph, here, but please let me know if there's anything offensive present, or if anything can be altered to be a better representation. Thank you.
> 
> Hope you enjoy <3 Big shoutout to my friend Synapse for their lovely help!

A house of locked doors and shuttered walls, and a silence that echoes louder than any sound. 

Toph grows up, here, in this drowning quiet pressing in all sides, so much more that the dark that is her existence. Large halls and invisible rules, a never ending labyrinth that spans on and on and on. She grows up in the way in the way it fills her lungs, grows up choking on it.

(She finds the badgermoles. The darkness fades. The silence lingers.)

When her dresses get dirty her mother tuts and brushes off dirt in admonishment, and when she shrieks and giggles or laughs too loudly, her father hushes her, reminds her about the necessary decorum. 

When people come to visit, she is ushered away to her room, and the door clicking shut behind the servant always sounds so final. So harsh. She takes to pressing her hands against her ears whenever it happens, chubby fists and the anger of a toddler: if you can’t hear it, it isn’t there.

Toph breathes. She grows. She has always been curious, has always had the power of giants curled into the palms of her hands, even when her parents fussed and insisted on holding back, to go slow, to not move forwards at all. 

But all this strength in her little bones and she wants to use it, to test it, to grow with it. 

She’s blind. And she’s tiny. 

But she isn’t fragile and she isn’t helpless. And she can _prove_ it.

When she shows up to the underground fight club, a sort of illegal pre-tournament requisite, all scuffed knees and small boned, forced to ask someone through gritted teeth to put her down as the Blind Bandit on the papers because her parents never taught her how to write-

They laugh at her. 

_Unacceptable._

She’s small and she appears helpless, and she learns to use it to her advantage. She learns to listen in on the other fighters, the way they talk and throw insults, mimics them to herself in the quiet of the night, practices snarky responses in her mind that she doesn’t dare say out loud within her home.

She gets better at sensing things. She gets better at fighting. She masters the waiting, the listening, how to move in tune with the singing of the earth beneath her feet. They laugh when she first shows up, but their laughter quickly dwindles when she starts winning. 

Not always. Not at first. Sometimes she stumbles, loses stamina. Sometimes she’s impatient and lashes out before she knows she should. Sometimes other fighters throw things at her she doesn’t expect, doesn’t know how to handle. 

But they don’t know how to handle her, either, so she thinks it evens out.

At nine, she gets four rounds in before being disqualified. She grumbles and groans about it, heads out to the mountains and practices, practices, practices. She’s going to win this. She’s going to show here parents, show _everyone,_ that she’s not incapable, not helpless, not fragile.

The earth sings. Toph moves with it. Practices with badger moles and with random challengers. Falls and skins her knees and gets back up, feels the dirt and the sweat, feels the validation of being treated like an equal, of having people fighting her with their all. It hums inside of her and grows and grows and grows, and it makes her feel powerful.

If her parents ever realize she’s missing, they don’t ask.

Ten years old, and she stands before the arena to take on her second Earth Rumble. She breathes, breathes, and the power of giants curls in her small hands. There is something brilliant growing inside of her, and she plants herself deep roots and lets them hold her steady.

She’s going to show them. She’s going to show _all_ of them. When she comes home with her winnings, with her champion’s belt, they’ll see. They’ll _see,_ and they’ll understand, and they’ll never usher her away to her room when the guests come ever again. 

Quietly, in the corner of her mind, Toph vows that she’s never going to be scared again. That after this, she’ll be invincible, the greatest earthbender to have ever been. 

She will never be powerless again. 

At ten years old, she enters Earth Rumble IV, and _wins._

But here’s the thing, about being ten years old. Toph stands before her parent’s bedroom, covered in dirt and dust and sweat, winnings in hand, and doubts.

Mothers and fathers have power, even when you're the greatest earthbender to have ever been. They have power to take, to put down, to ban. There are rooms in your mind that only they hold the key too, and the thing Toph hates most in the world is being locked away.

She stands there. She doubts. There is a difference between powerless and all powerful. It is a difference she has not scaled.

And then, quietly, quietly-

She walks away.

Best to keep on playing the perfect daughter. Best to keep on wearing dresses and makeup and porcelain smiles. This is the girl her parents know and love: this small, sweet fragile thing who stays in her room and eats her dinner quietly. 

Toph isn’t sure the same could be said for this girl she’s become, with her calloused fingers and dirtied soles, the way sometimes her laughter breaks free like the squawk of a bird, graceless and bright and loud. 

This is the thing Toph hasn’t learned, not yet: it never should have even been a question.

But she does, she _does._ Toph runs away from a world of walls that have been built around her, finds herself in the presses of her own existence, in the way she fits into place with the people who opened the door without her having to bust her way out.

Love is so easy, here, amongst her friends. They give it up in spades, like it is some unlimited resource that just flows and flows and flows. They’re always hugging, always touching, always offering hands to hold. 

And it’s _hard._ It’s hard, because Toph is so clumsy with love. She soaks up words of affection and shared laughter and inside jokes, builds it up inside of herself like it’s something that needs to be stored, something that has to be held on to, because who knows when it will come next?

But it never stops coming. That’s the thing. It _never stops coming._

Aang calls out cheerful _Love you!’s_ every time someone leaves to go to the market, forever reaching out to pat and nudge and hug. Katara lets her braid her hair, even when the lines come out crooked and imperfect, is always there to spar or to offer advice. Sokka has conversations with her, words flowing back and forth, about inventions and shenanigans and things that are lost and gained, and never expects her to sit silent. Suki teaches her how to hold a knife, how to use it in a fight, and when she gets frustrated the older girl taps her on the nose and tells her, “Always good to have alternatives,” with a smile.

Zuko, she thinks, is almost as clumsy with love as she is. But he tries, offering awkward branches of companionship, letting her bully him into giving her piggyback rides, into fighting and field trips and friendship.

And they sit together around campfires, talking and joking and laughing, and it’s so different from the quiet dinners of her old home. And they spar with each other, pushing each other farther and harder and faster than they’ve ever been, never tutting and insisting to hold back, to go slow, to not move forwards at all. And they play games and they share stories, and if Toph storms off in the middle of the night someone is always sure to follow, always sure to ask after her, to check in. 

Love is brightest in the dark, and there is darkness, here. They are living through a war, being hunted, endangering their lives. They have all lost, in some way or another, and these are the hurts that sit under the skin and _ache._

But for all the pain and all the shadows, there is light. And Toph is clumsy with this, with love, her small hands made to hold the power of giants instead of these fierce and gentle truths. 

She curls her fingers around the glow either way, and the warmth of it is something brilliant inside of her chest.

There are a few weeks, after the war ends, where they are together.

Every last one of them is exhausted, she can sense it- the way they drag their feet, yawn and stretch and lean forwards once more, eyes narrowed and focused. Aang passes out that first night, camped out on rocky outcrops with a potential mass murderer locked down tight a few scant feet to their left, molten with bruisings and small cuts. Sokka and Suki trade glances and say nothing at all.

Toph tries to sleep, too. She dreams of open air, her parents' faces looking down from the clouds, nothing in all the world holding her steady, and wakes up in cold sweat.

She doesn’t sleep much after that.

And then there are reunions to be had and injuries to be tended. There are prisoners to release and uprisings to put down, refugees to find homes for. There is an attempted military coup three days after they defeat the firelord, and Toph takes a vicious sort of glee in caging dozens of warriors at a time deep within the earth, ready to be taken and transported for trial.

There are so many trials, so many lines drawn in the sand. Toph sits with Zuko and measures heartbeats, searching for trustworthy councilmen and advisors, scowling as far too many participants turn out to be frauds or cowards or power hungry fools. 

There are a few weeks.

But the world is big and they are but one small group with seemingly hundreds of tasks to do, and they can’t stay within the walls of the fire nation palace forever.

Climbing aboard Appa without Zuko feels incredibly wrong, and flying away even worse. It is cold up here, without his steady presence, and everyone else is too silent.

She is the first to be dropped off, in front of the gates of her childhood home. It feels so much smaller now than it once did.

Sokka gives her a manly slap on the back, putting up a happy demeanor that is an utter lie, heart stuttering in his chest. Suki kisses her cheeks and Katara grips her hand tight, tells her they’ll see each other soon, tells her things will turn out just fine, and Toph almost believes it.

She resists the urge to crack a joke about not seeing _anything,_ actually, but only just.

Aang hugs her for almost three entire minutes. She thinks of friendships and lifetimes, and hugs back just as fierce.

When he pulls away he swipes at his eyes, and she punches his arm, gives Momo a berry she's been saving, and gently pats Appa on one large furry arm: she’s going to miss the fuzzy snot monster.

Then she stands there even as the sky bison presses off the ground and leaves her with nothing but whooshing air and her friends’ calling voices to know how far behind they have left her. 

And when all is silent and all is still, she sighs and turns to face the gates, ready to try again.

She makes it a month.

She’s honestly surprised she lasts as long as she does. 

It starts out okay, she supposes, with this fierce hug that catches her out of bounds, this tight hold of adoration. And Toph lets her parents hold her, lets them blubber and coo and check for hurts, and she feels awkward and strange and bone deep exhausted, feels almost sort of proud. 

_Hey,_ she wants to tell her younger, smaller self. _We make it. It’s okay. We make it._

She smells her mother’s perfume. Feels her father’s heartbeat. They’re pressed so close, and she breathes and breathes and imagines all the doors to have ever been bursting wide open.

They’re going to do it right, this time. They’re going to be family. Real family.

Her room, once they send her off to bed, is strange and alien to the presses of her feet. She lies down and the mattress is too soft. Pillows and blankets and silk sheets. She lays there with her healthy layer of dirt for hardly a moment before rolling over and off, curling up on the ground.

It’s different from the outside, no fresh soil and humming vibrancy of nature, but it’s better than nothing. 

She closes her eyes: tomorrow is going to be the start of something new, and she’s here to be a part of it.

She sleeps.

The next day she wakes up and goes to breakfast.

Except-

Her parents tut when they see her. Admonish her in that mild mannered way of theirs for being such a mess at the table, shoo her off to get changed. 

Toph breathes roughly through her nose. Her friends never cared what she ate in. 

But they were on the run. They were living it rough. This is… different. This is fine. Toph can wash her face and push her hair back into a bun. This is _fine._

It’s going to take effort. Force. Perseverance. Toph can wait, can give them time. Toph can help them adjust to her as herself. They’re all unfamiliar with the sort of love that curls soft and warm and perfect inside of your chest. She just needs to take it slow.

But little rules and little expectations. They build up, piece by piece, and suddenly she’s back in a dress, back in make-up. They try to talk with her about her time away over extravagant meals, about her journeys and her friends.

Except they don’t understand. Toph lived through a war, was out on the front lines with people trying to kill her. She’s been on the run, travelled through deserts and felt pangs of hunger and thirst. She has been burned, has been out in the world beyond these perfect walls, has been surrounded by people desolate and strung thin when her family has always lived in the height of luxury. 

Sometimes, she wakes up, shivery and cold and heart in her throat. Sometimes, she thinks she cries out.

If Sokka was here, they’d talk about it, quiet whispers in the dark. If Katara was here, they’d walk some way from the campsite and spar. If Suki was here she’s ruffle her hair and kiss her forehead, whisper stories of times long past. If Zuko was here, he’d awkwardly pat her shoulder and flail so terribly at comforting it would bring her to laughter. If Aang was here, he’d give her this look of utter _knowing_ and then curl up around her, usually passing out while drooling on her shoulder, warm and safe and comforting. 

Her parents never come.

She misses her friends like a limb. It aches with phantom pains somewhere in her chest. They had promised to write, to send messages and gifts and keep in touch, but so far there’s been nothing, even though she’s sent off a few of her own missives herself, tracking down that one willing gardener who always had a soft spot for her to help her write letters and package gifts.

 _They’re busy,_ she tries to convince herself late at night, after bending herself a tent of stone right there in the middle of her bedroom. But her fingers twitch and her eyes feel wet, and her emotions boil up inside of her too big.

This sort of love, the ones that aches, is one she’s more familiar with. She just never expected it coming from her friends.

Toph washes her hair every morning and hates it. She puts makeup on and hates it. Sits at the formal table eating meals and tells jokes no one laughs at until all that is left is silence, silence, silence. 

She feels isolated and lonely, and it’s infinitely worse now that she knows how it’s supposed to be.

But then her parents invite her to actually attend a party with them, and she’s _so happy_ to be included.

“Our _daughter,”_ her father says to some fancy official or another, “knows the Firelord and helped the Avatar.”

And Toph thinks, _Zuko feeds the turtle ducks every morning and Aang does thirty consecutive flips before attending meetings to burn off energy. They’re really not impressive as their titles sound._ Opens her mouth to _speak_ and-

Her father brushes over her. 

_No problem,_ she thinks, because it happens. 

But then it happens again. 

And again.

And all that warm happiness at being included, of being welcomed, of no longer being shuttered away like some sort of shameful secret, fades and turns cold and hard in her gut. 

She bites the insides of her cheek, excuses herself, and bends the metal bars around the property on her way out to some secluded area to blow off some steam, putting them back behind her if only because she doesn’t want them to know how she escaped.

(Mothers and fathers have power. There are rooms in your mind that only they hold the key too, and the thing Toph hates most in the world is being locked away.)

Coming back afterwards is one of the harder things she’s done. But _dammit._ She’s trying. And they’re trying, she thinks, in their awkward, stilted ways, inviting her to parties and sitting with her by the fireplace and watching when she constructs statues in the backyard. They might be doing it _wrong,_ but they’re doing it.

She wants to get this right. Wants to have this, to be accepted and loved fiercely.

She’s experienced how Katara and Sokka are with their dad. She’s heard how Aang is in those rare, quiet moments when he talks about Gyatso. 

Toph _wants_ that. 

So she tries. Tries to get them used to her as herself. Tries to show off her skills, her capabilities, her power. Tries to tell them about how she helped save the world, to pull back from the finery and society’s expectations and turn to her preferred outfits and mannerisms.

 _Tries,_ being a key word. 

Quiet admonishments and frowned orders. The weight of judgement laying heavy on her skin. Toph swore she would never be powerless, never again, but she still finds herself falling quiet during dinners and parties, practicing her bending in secret, and spending days with solely herself for company.

(They're her _parents._ This is fine, it'll get better, they'll get better, she just has to be patient, just has to give them time, show them how-)

It would be better, she thinks, if there hadn't been a continued lack of letters from her friends. 

But as it is, there's nothing.

So Toph escapes into the mountains more often than not. Collapses massive chambers and carves them back open. Stamps her feet and carves statues of Katara and Zuko and Sokka and Aang and Suki, feeling bitter and angry and scared. 

Sometimes she sleeps there, in these caverns carved by her small powerful hands. Dreams of a war, of hanging helpless and terrified, of flying and fighting and the way she knows how to make the people most important to her laugh. 

She wakes up in cold sweat every time. Goes home in time for breakfast.

Her parents never comment. Her parents never ask.

It comes to head like this:

Toph asks her father if he’s gotten any messages from her friends, some vague notion that possibly there’s some sort of mix up, and her father says no, turns to leave.

And his heart-

His heart, it skips a beat.

Everything goes cold. Everything goes numb. Zuko explained his rage once, the way it consumes and burns ever brighter until it finally putters out and leaves him with the aftermath. Her anger is nothing like that, it’s permafrost, layered just underneath the skin, stiff and rigid and _deep._

She shifts, and the doorway is suddenly gone, blocked by harsh stone.

“You’re lying,” she says, and it tastes like acid on her tongue.

Her father laughs, voice wavering up and down, up and down, a nervous chuckle if she’s ever heard any.

“What are you talking about? I haven’t touched any letters-”

His pulse stutters. Again. Again.

The house trembles with her anger, all of her fine tuned control slipping from her fingers. The earth is singing, singing, rushing to her command. 

_“How dare you?”_ she hisses, and does not shake even as paintings drop from their walls and pottery shatters. 

Her father’s heart is pounding like a jackalope’s. _Good,_ she thinks, _I hope you feel small,_ and only hates herself a little bit for thinking it. 

“Where are they? Where are my letters? Give them to me. _Now.”_

There is permafrost under her skin, her anger is cold and clinical and unbroken. She glares at her father and he leads her to a small cupboard, tucked away and hidden in plain sight in the sprawling layout of the Beifong Mansion. The burlap sack inside is stuffed to the brim with letters and packages and gifts, enough so that it takes her actual effort to lift, and she snatches it from the man’s hands and practically runs to her room, blockading herself in. 

She can’t read the letters, but she can feel her way through the gifts. The collection of cool rocks Sokka has been slowly sending her way from around the world, the carving of Appa Suki made and sanded smooth. Zuko sent her some sort of Fire Nation candies, which are spicy and sweet at the same time, and Aang’s made her a bracelet in what seems traditional airbending style, from what she can feel and what she can remember from the necklace he had shown her at the coronation. Katara sends her a headband with little metal knives tucked away inside, and the texture is coarse and pleasing to her fingers. 

Toph sits alone in her room and opens presents and the permafrost under her skin melts with every thoughtful gift. She was _so angry_ and while that pain is still there, it’s been almost entirely replaced by this bone deep ache of relief and homesickness and _love_ that surges and crashes over her, an avalanche of feelings that weighs so heavy.

She gathers armfuls of letters and goes outside to find the gardener, sits with him under the tree as he reads through them for her, catches the wavering tones of affection and humour and worry of her friends in the man’s monotone voice. 

Inside jokes and exasperations. Some of Aang’s messages are only a couple lines- _Miss you so much! Write back soon!-_ and some are entire pages - _and then the cabbage merchant was like, “Are you following me?” and I said no, and then he told me that apparently-_

Sokka keeps her updated on where he is, complains about his leg while Katara talks about the things she’s seen that remind her of her _favourite little mud slug._ Zuko bemoans court duties and sets out tentative questions on how she is, what’s she been up to, if she’s demolished anyone in a fight lately. Suki’s missives are cheerful and questioning, infrequent but present nonetheless. 

How can they know her so well? She’s known them for less than a year and yet they have a better grasp on who she is than her parents ever got in twelve.

 _(Give them time,_ she thinks, _give them time_ , and wonders if all the time in the world would even begin to change them if they're not willing to give a priper try.)

And the more recent the letters, the longer they’ve received no response, the more worried they become. Less about their days and more about her. _Are you okay? Is something wrong? Please write soon! We’re really worried!_

Numbly, she realizes that her parents must have stopped communication both ways. That somewhere is a burlap sack filled with her own messages in the gardener’s careful hand, those earrings she had made for Katara and those sweets she had picked out for Sokka. The scroll of poems for Zuko and a box of fancy tea leaves for Iroh. The toys she had found in the village market for Aang and that sharp blade she had chosen for Suki. All together and all gathering dust in some remote corner.

And then finally there’s a letter from Aang, which the gardener opens and then pauses, heart jumping.

“What does it say!?” she asks, and the gardener slowly reads it to her.

The avatar is coming tomorrow to check in on her and make sure she’s not being held hostage or that something awful hasn’t happened to her. Is coming by tomorrow because he misses her.

_Aang is coming tomorrow._

There’s something wrong, here. Something wrong in the way that makes her so _relieved,_ in the way that has that soul crushing weight lifted somewhat from her chest. She’s supposed to be happy here.

But she isn’t. She _isn’t._ And it aches.

She’s far more excited to reunite with Aang then she has ever been with her parents.

 _What does that say?_ she thinks. _What does that say about me?_

And then quieter, in a voice that sounds like Zuko in her head-

_What does it say about them?_

  
  


Toph packs away her dresses that night. 

She folds them neatly. Places them in drawers one by one by one. 

She wipes off her makeup. She wipes away her tears. She reaches under her bed and pulls out her travelling pack, the one her mother had tried to get her to throw away and she had instead hidden.

She’s glad for it, now.

The gifts go into the pack, and the letters. Money her mother had showered down on her when she had first gotten home, tucked away in little satchels. Her passport and her travelling clothes, a small badgermole doll one of the maids had given to her for her birthday one year, when she had been upset about the surplus of expensive and impractical gifts made to express status, not the interests of a little girl.

“Our little secret,” the maid had winked, and Toph had giggled and hugged the toy tight, reminded of her friends in the mountain.

The woman had been fired the next day, but Toph had hid the toy under her mattress until her parents had forgotten about it, which never took very long. 

It feels small and scruffed and ugly in her pack, the material rough against the pads of her fingers. She wonders if that is why here parents wanted to get rid of it, because it’s not perfection incarnate, because it tarnishes their little fantasy of a perfect family and perfect wealth.

She sighs and ignores memories of locked doors and shuttered walls.

Then, hesitantly, quietly, she packs two things from her parents. An ornate fan her father had gotten for her on one of his business trips, which he had once played with with her, fanning her on a hot summer day and pretending to be the wind. A small ring her mother had given her, plain and unadorned. Toph still remembers the way her quiet mother had looked handing it to her, glancing over her shoulder as if checking for intruders, her smile slightly strained and her eyes oddly solemn.

“It used to be your grandmother’s,” her mother had whispered, and curled Toph’s small fingers over the smooth metal, like a secret, like a promise. 

Afterwards she had let Toph sit on her lap, and had described the birds flying past the window in the garden outside.

Perhaps this is what makes it hard, in the end. That they’re not evil. That they _have_ treated her with kindness, with something like affection, with something a lonely girl could mistake for love. 

They did not burn her. They did not yell at her. They did not starve her.

But they didn’t hug her, either. They didn’t tuck her into bed and curl up besides her when she had nightmares. They tried to hold her back and keep her quiet when she was built to move mountains, tried to imprint a hand-made weakness into the lines of her small frame and carve her into something she’s not

Dinner parties and quiet meals: it is an aching sort of realization, to realize that she’s traded one sort of cage for another, that locked doors have been replaced with glass cases, a trophy to be toted around and admired, but not heard. The doors were never burst open. The bars were only bent.

It makes her feel so _stupid,_ because she should have _known._ Toph has been escaping all her life, and has tasted freedom in its fullness. This stale and bitter acid in her mouth could never compare.

_She should have known-_

_Breathe,_ she thinks, and she does. 

She tightens the drawstring of her pack. She dresses in familiar sturdy fabric made to bend, curls her meteorite bracelet in bands around her ankle and pulls on Aang’s gifted bracelet. She uses Katara’s headband to pull back her hair, uncaring if the colours clash.

It’s not like she can see them either way.

Then she sits on her bed. And she waits.

In the morning, she goes to her parents. Her feet feel like lead but her chest thrums with something like life, something like love, bouing her up in a stormy sea.

For the second time this year, she stands before them, feels the weight of their stately gazes resting judgmentally on her skin without seeing them.

“I’m leaving,” she says, simple and clipped. The frost is back. It curls in her veins.

“No, you’re not,” her father says, his face pulling into a frown.

Toph bulldozes over him.

“Yes. I am. And you can’t stop me. Even if you hire a thousand guards and lock me in my room, I’ll escape. I’m the greatest earthbender this world has ever _seen_ , and I’m not going to stay here pretending to be something I don’t want to be.”

Mother looks at her with sad eyes.

“But Toph,” she says, voice soft, “we _love_ you.”

And Toph licks her lips, clenches her hands. The tears come hot and tight to her eyes and she refuses to let them fall.

“You don’t love me.” She means to say it like a proclamation, as fierce and explosive as a dying star, but instead it comes out bitter and broken, young wood popping and smoking in the flames. “Or, if you do love me, you don’t love me enough. Not enough to change. You- you love me like a porcelain doll.”

She’s gaining steam, now. The words are spilling out of her like an avalanche, faster and faster. They grate on her throat, drag on her tongue. She spits them out and feels them shatter across the ground. 

“You don’t love _me._ You- you love the prize you show off to your guests, the perfect little daughter who helped save the world. Before I ran away, I wasn’t even that. You kept me locked up, kept me a secret, like I was some ugly broken _thing._ You were _ashamed_ of me.”

Quiet, now. Quieter. Her anger is permafrost but her grief is an earthquake, tearing her open and sending her stumbling, shaking her to her core.

“You don’t even _know_ me,” she says, and then she falls quiet, waiting, listening to heartbeats.

Her father’s face pulls into a tighter frown, controlled and stale even now. 

_I’m your only daughter!_ She wants to scream, _fight for me, cry for me, prove me wrong and love me!”_

But they don’t. They sit. They stare. She feels her mother glance at her father and then fall silent and still, demure and appeasing even in this. He must look angry: his heart most certainly is. 

“All I’ve done,” he says, voice a steely sort of calm, “was in your best interest.”

Avalanches and earthquakes. A thousand doors burst wide open. The power of giants in her small hands. Anger runs deep and her love runs deeper, roots holding strong through the frost.

 _“Your_ best interests, you mean! You never let me do anything I wanted. You never let me be myself: you were too worried about your reputation to do anything else. The only way I made _friends_ is because I ran away in the dead of night and fought in a _war!”_

She’s cracking, she thinks. Like dried earth after too long a drought. She can feel the fractures widening in her bones.

“My friends are a better family than you _ever_ were. And I’m leaving you, because they know how to love me _for_ me. And this time, I don’t think I’m coming back. Because I _deserve_ to be loved.”

She swallows dry. She looks at her father. _Tell me I’m wrong about you,_ she thinks, _tell me you agree._

But he doesn't. Not with his words. Not with his beating heart. 

Her mother keeps quiet, hands clasped on her lap too tight.

Toph breathes. It never should have even been a question.

Straighten your shoulders, and hike up your pack higher onto your back. Lift your chin: if there’s one useful thing they ever did teach her, it’s how to look unaffected even when your emotions are trying to tear you apart.

Here’s the thing, _here’s the thing:_ Toph is clumsy with love. It doesn’t fit quite right in the palms of her hands. But she’s willing to work at it, to dig in her heels and face it head on, to try and try again until she can hear the subtle beats as easy as she listens to the music of the earth.

“Goodbye,” she says. And she leaves. Just like that.

 _I love you,_ she thinks, and it aches, and only because it's true.

Aang finds her in the pouring rain, mud splattered and angry and stubbornly refusing to shed tears over people who will likely forget all about her. It never took very long.

He’s grown, in the last month, even more of a lanky beanpole than before, leaping off a crooning Appa with a grace that conflicts his wiry frame. 

He takes one look at her and goes, “Oh, _Toph.”_

And then he pulls her into a hug. 

It’s already more affection than she’s gotten in the last three weeks, and she holds back just as tightly, buries her forehead into his shoulder. 

“It’s not _fair,”_ she hisses, and the rain clings to her clothes, drips down the nape of her neck.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry. It’s not.”

Quietly, quietly, over the downpour, “What do you need? I’m here, now. I’m listening.”

...Her parents wouldn’t have thought to ask her that in a thousand years. It aches.

Toph holds him tighter and says nothing, until Appa grumbles and licks her hair, startling a laugh out of her chest, as sharded and heavy as it is. Aang laughs, too, shuffling them both closer to the sky bison so that he can join the group hug.

The earth sings with the vibrations of a million raindrops. Aang’s heart beats against her ear.

She breathes.

They go home, or something like it. When Toph steps off Appa and onto familiar Fire Nation ground, Zuko is there to greet her.

He places two hands on her shoulders, bends down to peer at her face, looking for something she’ll never be able to see. 

She feels small, here, raw and exposed, but almost in a good way. As if someone has brushed away dried out top soil to reveal soft fresh dirt laying in wait beneath. Zuko’s heartbeat is steady, and his hands are firm.

He understands more than most. The way this aches. This broken twisted thing people implant in your chest and call love when it’s anything but.

“Stay as long as you need,” he says, and his pulse doesn’t skip a beat. “You’re always welcome here.”

Toph punches him in the shoulder. 

Zuko understands. 

Suki finds her sitting on Appa’s tail somewhere past midnight. Toph’s eyes feel itchy from too little sleep, her hands jittering from leftover adrenaline from a nightmare she can’t even remember.

She curls her fingers into fists and hopes that the older girl can’t see them shake.

“What are you going to do now?”

And that’s the question, isn’t it? It’s the one that’s been ringing in the back of her mind ever since she’s left home for the second time. The future stretches on for years and years and years, and she has nowhere to go, no place to be. Not really.

“I don’t know,” she says. 

“You could always join the Kyoshi Warriors…”

And Suki is smiling, she can hear it in her voice, in the way the older girl is nudging her shoulder, soft and fierce and warm. Toph considers it, donning the warrior’s garb and painting her face, considers travelling the world with the woman besides her and a troupe of powerful fighters, escorting refugees and fighting the good fight in villages where fire nation armies have refused to leave.

She considers.

But Toph’s feet are tired. She’s come a long way, since stepping out her front door. Longer than she could have ever imagined. She’s lived through a war, since then, inside of her and out, and she can’t imagine going even farther, not now when everything weighs so heavy.

Or, she can imagine. She _can:_ Toph can do most anything if she puts her mind to it. But she’s learning, too, that she doesn’t have to. That it’s okay to step back. That it’s okay to breathe.

(Besides, she’s just escaped from makeup and dresses. It seems almost counterintuitive to slip right back into them again, even if she knows they’re not the same thing.) 

“No, but, uh, thanks for the offer.”

The older girl laughs, nudges their shoulders again. It’s strange, the touch, closing in when she cannot quite sense it coming. Beneath them, Appa grumbles and shifts, relaxing once more into sleep.

Suki takes her hand, squeezes it tight.

“Whatever you decide to do, whoever you decide to be, we’ll all be right behind you. You know that, right?”

And Toph swallows. Hard. There is something brilliant growing inside of her chest, something hard caught in her throat, and she breathes and she breathes and she breathes around it.

“I do,” she says, and she doesn’t specify _it was a long time coming._ “Thanks, Suki.”

Another squeeze. Another breath. The power of giants is curled into her palms: Toph’s hands are made to move mountains.

(They are also made to be held.)

Sokka is still limping when he comes in for a hug, but only just barely. He laughs when he sees her, taller and more muscular and grown in a way that is almost hard to associate with the teenager who left her behind at the gates of her old home.

Funny, how a month can change things.

But his laugh is the same, and his heartbeat, and his terrible, _terrible_ humour. And Sokka bonks his head against hers and goes, fast and happy and rambling, ”Oh _spirits,_ Toph, I’ve missed you. I need to kidnap you to the North Pole and have you scare some sense into all the busybodies up there. I’d ask Aang to do it, but he’d give me the eyes of disappointment-”

And the story goes. On and on and on. Toph listens to Sokka’s political rambles, interjects with sarcastic commentary and vague, uncertain suggestions. The older boy seems particularly taken with her idea of taking one particularly stubborn Water Tribe leader outback to confer with his sword.

They go for a walk through Zuko’s gardens, the sun beating down from above. The turtle ducks squawk when they pass the lake, and somewhere distantly she can hear some guards laughing on their afternoon lunch break. 

She wonders how long it’s been since these palace walls have heard such trivial, gentle things. Good humour shared between friends and soft, singing earth. Beneath her feet flowers are starting to blossom, delicate petals reaching tentatively towards the sun.

Toph knows what it is to grow up in a world of locked doors and shuttered walls. She knows how the silence hangs heavy, makes you small in the face of its great expanse. Has felt it on her tongue and choked on it.

She’s glad it’s not quiet here. 

They walk. They talk. Sokka shows off his poetry that is actually surprisingly well written, and Toph tries to do a handstand, cheating only a little by having the soil beneath her fingers harden and creep up to hold her steady.

And at the end of it all, when he swings an arm around her shoulders and starts guiding them to the kitchens, he whispers, “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too,” she whispers back, and it only aches a little, and only because it’s true. 

Katara swoops her up in a hug, tight and warm and strong. It feels a thousand times more natural then when her parents had done it.

 _(What does that say about me?_ _What does it say about them?)_

“Oh,” she says, “I’ve _missed_ you!”

And Toph snorts, shoves the older girl away, gently, gently.

“Missed you too, Sugar Queen.”

And Katara laughs, her heart thrumming strong and steady in her chest. 

It’s funny, because she and Katara conflicted with each other so easily, at first. The older girl was controlling and brash and matched her stone for stone in flaring temperaments. It was simple to associate the young woman with her parents, easy to push years of buried anger onto her.

But Katara had her own hurts. Her own open wounds, healing slowly inside of her chest. And the waterbender never had her parents' faults, not really: Katara’s problem was that she cared _too much_ , that her emotions boiled and so rarely stopped, simmering in this never ending grief and rage and worry until it bubbled over.

Toph’s parents never cared enough.

_(And it aches and aches and aches-)_

Toph thinks some of that raging grief has settled, now, into something softer and stronger still. She wonders if she’ll reach that same sort of peace, in time, letting go of old hurts and starting anew from them. She wonders if she wants to.

She wonders if she even has a say. If this is just one of those things that come with time and age and wisdom.

Katara reaches out to dust off some dirt off her shoulder. Strangely, it doesn’t feel like an admonition. 

“How would you feel about a spar?”

And Toph breathes and plants her feet, deep roots and strong foundations, and smiles. _“Spirits,_ please, I’ve been going out of my _mind_ with boredom-”

They go. They spar. Aang laughs when he sees them next, covered in mud and sweat and still snarking at each other, and Toph takes the sound and pulls it inside of her, lets it sit and spool soft and warm inside of her chest, knows that it won’t be long before she hears it again.

They are sitting at a table, tucked away in the corner of the room. Iroh had poured her tea and Toph had not protested, had let him with something like a smile on her face because there was a time this would seem to be nothing but pitying and now it is nothing but kindness.

And they drink and they chat, and the day wanes outside, and when there is nothing but the dregs of tea leaves left in their cups, she feels Iroh leans forward with a sort of mischievousness in his demeanor.

“I have something for you,” he says, and Toph feels her interest perk.

He hands it to her, a small ceramic bowl lined with cracks of gold. She traces her finger over the smoothness of the metal, the painted edges.

“Have you ever heard of kintsugi?”

Still feeling the conflicting textures, Toph shakes her head.

“It was once considered a form of art, in the Fire Nation. When a piece of pottery broke, it was repaired with powder gold lacquer to highlight the imperfections. Once completed, it was seen as all the more beautiful.”

Toph purses her lips. There’s something here, she thinks, that she’s not getting. A message hidden in a convoluted metaphor.

“So it’s beautiful, because it was… broken?”

And Iroh laughs, that sort of laughter that rings with a certain sort of brilliance, that makes you want to hear it again because it means _something_ has gone right in the world.

He reaches out and takes her hands, cups them around the bowl. His fingers are wrinkled and calloused, large against her small ones.

“It is beautiful,” he says, his heart a steady beat, “not because it was broken, but because of the time and care and _love_ that has gone into fixing it.”

Toph breathes. In, and out. Again. Again. 

She can feel it, the thousands of particles bound together to make the whole. If she wanted, she could bend it, meld the entire thing into a sphere, a dagger, a miniature statue of the man sitting before her. 

But she doesn’t. There is something inside of her, she thinks, that likes the idea of a bowl, forged through hard work and effort, made to be filled with treasured trinkets, made to be cherished.

“Thank you,” she says, and she means it.

Iroh smiles and orders another cup of tea.

Toph has been fractured, has been kept in locked doors and shuttered walls. There is a message in this, a broken one that presses into the skin. The silence of her childhood echoed louder than any kind word.

There is an ache, in this, when the people who you are supposed to turn to first become the ones who you find yourself from hiding from. Her parents tried to imprint hand-made weakness into the lines of her small frame and carve her into something she’s not, and the cruelty lies in the fact that they never even realized how wrong they were to do so. 

_Enough, enough, enough:_ her entire childhood is her pressing her small calloused hands into fists and whispering this to herself in deep dark nights. This love that aches is enough. This home that is a cage is enough. The validation of the crowd is enough. 

_She_ is enough.

But it should never have been a question, should never have been a doubt curling in the corners of her young mind. It should never have been her job to teach them to love her. 

(Toph is so much more than the broken, twisted things that were implanted in her chest. She is so much more than the ways other people hurt her.)

These small hands: they do not shake. They are made to move mountains. Made to hold the power of giants. Toph breathes around the weight in her lungs, as sharded and heavy as it is. All this strength in her little bones and she wants to use it, to test it, to grow with it. 

The earth sings beneath her feet. Toph goes out into this world so shrouded in darkness and finds her way, one step at a time. There is something brilliant growing inside of her, and she plants herself deep roots and lets them hold her steady.

Toph is so clumsy with love.

These fierce and gentle truths, they spill into her calloused palms. There is this future before her, stretching on and on and on. There is a family waiting for her, and they will not let her go alone.

She is so, so clumsy with love, but she is mastering it, in spits and spurts and starts. She is learning to handle affection softly, is learning how to give freely, is learning how to hold the warmth inside of her and not shake. 

Toph is filling up the fractures inside of her. She is filling them up with gold. There are universes in her chest and she walks on steady feet, finds love in the presses of her own existence, in the creases of her friends’ hands against her own, in the way laughter rings and drowns out every silence. 

She is worthy of love. She always has been.

Toph breathes, breathes.

She aches, but only a little, and only because it's true.

**Author's Note:**

> To Those Who Need To Read It:  
> I just want to say that you- the one reading this right now- is worthy of love. You might be involved in a toxic relationship, or living in a poor family situation, or are simply struggling with the demons in your head, but none of this takes away from the fact that you are a human being with interests and passions and so much room to grow. There are universes in your chest, my friend, and stardust in your eyes, and the crinkles in your fingers are made to be filled with so many fierce and gentle truths. I know I'm a stranger on the internet. I know I'm just some words on your screen, but believe me when I say that I'm in your corner, and believe me when I say that you are going to find people who adore you for every facet of your being. And if someone in your life can't see how wonderful you are in all your glory, then they don't deserve you, and you have no obligations to them.  
> If you need someone to chat to, even if it's just to rant, you can message me on my tumblr: https://mahpotatoequeen.tumblr.com/  
> I'm sending you so much love from my little corner of the world, my friend. I hope you feel it singing.


End file.
